New Boat Launched in the Midlands

[NormMessinger]

http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b3d732b3127cce8e0fba4ee9450000003610

Dear Norm,

I've appreciated your e-mail bulletins about your boats gatherings up your way, but have been unable to get myself up there for one of them. But I wanted to send you a photo of my homebuilt boat- see attachment- and hope I can someday trailer it up your way. Meanwhile, it's here in Kansas on Clinton Lake, renting a marina slip for the month of September.

Feel free to share the photo, or this letter, with anyone, if you wish; I wanted to post it on the WB Forum but lost my password and also haven't learned the way to put photos on the forum yet... post it if you want to, I wouldn't mind, since I'm rather proud of it- I mean "her". Soon I will send a print up to Brooklin to see if they will publish it in Launchings.

I named her Epona, after Link's pony in the wonderful 1999 Nintendo game The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, which I played through with my little boy a few years ago. There is also a beautiful melody called "Epona's Song", written by Koje Kondo.

By the way, the GameCube sequel to Ocarina of Time (called "Windwaker") involves Link sailing a magic talking boat.. My kid's favorite game. The kid in all of us would love it. Link sails from island to island having
adventures and conflicts- sort of like real life....

best
Gib Sosman

Well, Gib, if Epona won't come to Prairie Islander perhaps Prairie Islander will come to Epona.... To paraphrase a famous authority on mountains.

Dang! That is a beautiful boat.

[Mike Vogdes]

Beautiful boat Gib! congrats.

[Wild Dingo]

Now thats flamin brilliant!!! :cool: ooooh I do love boatporn in the evenin I do like boatporn in the mornin... gawd I love boatporn at anytime! :D

Design Norm?? Wee Seal or Eun Mara? or something I havent drooled over yet?!! EGAD NO!!!!! :eek: Anything but THAT!!! :eek: :(

From here she looks as sweet as anything great job too! Soooo were seein a road trip in the near future for Phyllis yourself and PI? Excellent!! Will await the details and photos! :cool:

[Keith Wilson]

That's a lovely example of Steve Redmond's Elver. Here's The Link. (http://www.sredmond.com/index_boat.htm) Nice work!!

[Concordia..41]

Wow!!! - Beautiful boat :cool:

Edited to add: That is just plain pretty smile.gif

[ 09-13-2003, 07:01 PM: Message edited by: Concordia..41 ]

[Gib Sosman]

Thanks, folks for the nice comments and the links to the other Redmond and Elver info. Thanks especialy to Norm, who posted the picture for me.
I forget to mention in my letter to Norm printed above that of course the design credit goes to Steve Redmond, and the very nicely built sails were made for me by Douglas Fowler up in New York State.
If I had to do it all over again, I probably would have just bought a Sunfish! (for sake of ease and convenience and economy)- but then I would have never learned so many things, such as about the Moaning Chair, or about the endlessly delightful work with epoxy,(I used System Three)et cetera This Elver, though reallly a rather small boat, turned out to be a much bigger project for me than I anticipated when I first saw the ad for the plans in the classifieds of WB about 14 years ago. And the boat took about twelve years to build to the point where it could be sailed, what with moving four times during the course of construction, having a son born in late '93 so he's now almost ten, and also having a 4'x60-foot elm tree fall on top of the boatbuilding shed, crushing it on top of the hull (which only suffered a very small injury when the broken end of a rafter unsuccessfully tried to poke a hole through the deck, but tree and building had to be removed before the boatbuilding could proceed)- So the project took a lot longer than I thought it would. And there's still a lot more little details of fitting-out, and sailing trials, to do on this sailboat- first launched this summer, even though I have already had comments such as "Wow, what a nice old wooden boat, are you fixing it up?" from people who didn't know the hull had never yet even been floated but was in fact still brand new!
And while I'm writing here- I want to thank two other people in particular- a neighbor from up in Connecticut, name of Sandy (Sanford) Meech,(since deceased) who gave permission to a me and a school friend way back in the mid-sixties to sail his Bluejay all summer if we would polyester and glass and paint the hull- and secondly, to my own Dad, George Gibson Sosman, who taught me to sail when long ago our family had a Dolphin-class 24' MORC sloop named "Mei Mei." My dad was lost at sea off the coast of New Jersey in October of 1969 while attempting to single-hand to the Caribbean, sailing south in his (as I remember) Lion-class 35 or 36 footer- I think it was a Cheoy Lee boat; he called it "Southern Cross" but had changed the name (or was going to change it) to "Barbara Anne". I never found out what happened to that boat- it was recovered, and then eventually sold- after my Dad was lost. Anyway, I just wanted to mention that because without him,I would have never been born or eventually landed here in Kansas to build this little Elver canoe-yawl.
happy sailing to all
Gib

[Tar Devil]

Sweet!!!

Later,

Phil